Video from previous coverage.
HAMILTON, Ohio (WXIX) – A former Tri-State volunteer officer will now spend time in prison.
Former New Miami police auxiliary officer Casey Gilpin was sentenced to 36 months in prison on June 18.
He was accused of tampering with police property room evidence and records in 2024.
The agency’s former police chief, Harold “Chip” Webb, waived his right to be indicted and pleaded guilty through a “Bill of Information” to charges of attempted tampering with evidence, a felony, and attempted theft, a misdemeanor.
Following a two-day trial, a jury deliberated an hour and a half before finding Gilpin, 48, of Mason, guilty on all six felony counts as charged in his indictment:
Two counts of tampering with recordsTwo counts of complicity to tampering with recordsOne count of tampering with evidenceOne count of complicity to tampering with evidence
Gilpin showed no emotion as the verdict was announced, or when Butler County Common Pleas Court Judge Keith Spaeth immediately revoked his bond.
He was taken into custody and moved to the Butler County Jail.
Gilpin was facing up to nine years in prison.
The felony convictions prevent Gilpin from working as a police officer again.
Casey Gilpin was booked into the Butler County Jail by 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. He will remain locked up as he awaits sentencing next month.(FOX19 NOW)Former chief stole money: Prosecutor
This case was about “everybody having confidence in the security and protection of evidence that comes into property rooms in Butler County and across the nation,” Gmoser said after the verdict Tuesday night.
Gilpin isn’t the only member of the police department who ran afoul of the law, the trial revealed.
His former chief testified against him for the prosecution.
In court Monday, Gmoser announced Webb would be pleading out soon to a felony tampering charge and misdemeanor theft.
“There is an allegation he took money from the property room and stole it,” Gmoser said.
Thousands were discovered to be missing after Webb was fired in the summer of 2024, state records show.
When asked how much Webb allegedly stole, Gmoser responded: “Possibly $2,000 or as low as $500 from a variety of different things.”
Casey Gilpin took the stand in his own defense, but the jury didn’t buy it and convicted him of six felonies.(FOX19 NOW)
Harold ‘Chip’ Webb was fired from the New Miami Police Department in June 2024 and will soon be a convicted felon, too, according to Prosecutor Mike Gmoser.(FOX19 NOW)State’s star witness: Former chief
The former police chief testified under oath Monday afternoon and again Tuesday morning.
He told the jury that both he and Gilpin conspired to lie to destroy police evidence from the property room, which included small amounts of drugs.
It happened as Webb suspected his time as New Miami’s police chief would be ending soon, according to Gmoser.
Gmoser personally handled the prosecution of the case after the former chief and Gilpin purposely misled a veteran assistant prosecutor on his staff, Brad Burress, chief of the criminal division, about how they planned to get rid of drugs and other evidence in the property room.
When Gmoser questioned Gilpin on the stand, Gilpin insisted, “At no point did I have any intention to mislead a public official.”
Gilpin’s lawyer argued he didn’t understand the legal process and requirements of legally disposing of police evidence well enough to know the difference between right and wrong, but the jury clearly didn’t buy it.
Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser convinced the jury that Casey Gilpin was guilty of tampering with police records and evidence.(FOX19 NOW)BCI launched investigation in 2024
The Ohio Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) began an extensive probe involving the New Miami Police Department in July 2024.
It came at the request of the acting police chief, Dan Bower, who was appointed when Webb was fired on June 24, 2024.
Webb, 49, of Trenton, was terminated for refusing to take a drug test with a witness present – a nurse, which he called “belittling,” village records show.
The village mayor at the time alleged the odor of marijuana reeked so badly inside the department on June 20, 2024, it could “knock you off your feet.”
The village records also accused Webb of “theft in office” and falsifying timesheets.
Once Webb left the police department in the summer of 2024, the mayor and council ordered the acting chief to audit the property room and equipment.
Bower’s preliminary review determined that more than $3,000 in cash was missing from the evidence room from a drug trafficking case, state records show.
So was another $500 in cash issued by the village for criminal, and investigations and drug purchases, according to his email to BCI seeking their assistance.
Bower also raised concerns with a state agent over the way drugs and other seized police evidence were handled and destroyed, state records show.
Indicted despite signing Garrity
Gilpin began working for New Miami police as an “auxiliary officer” on Jan. 6, 2022, and submitted his formal letter of resignation “for personal reasons” on July 5, 2024, village records show.
Those positions are unpaid, and usually auxiliary officers are unarmed and do not have arrest powers, but New Miami’s attorney, Jonathan Fox, said Gilpin was armed and had sworn powers.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to have served the citizens of New Miami these past several years. It has been a rewarding experience,” Gilpin’s resignation letter states.
The same day he quit, Gilpin signed a Garrity rights notice that shows he was interviewed as part of an internal investigation, according to a copy released to us by the village last year.
Under Garrity, officers are ordered by their employer to provide a statement as part of an internal or administrative investigation, under the threat of job-related discipline, up to and including termination, if they refuse to answer.
The statements cannot be used against them in a criminal prosecution.
Garrity rights, however, do not protect from prosecution altogether.
Prosecutors can still pursue a criminal case using independently gathered evidence.
Gilpin, Webb raised suspicions
Gilpin and Webb raised suspicions over how they disposed of drugs from the evidence room, court records show.
On the police department’s behalf, Burress applied to a county judge for a court order disposing of drugs, drug paraphernalia and miscellaneous property at the police evidence room, according to a copy of the application.
The police department had been trying to dispose of the drugs for months.
The application to the court stipulated the items “should be declared contraband and be destroyed at the Incinerator at Children’s Hospital in Liberty Township before being disposed of pursuant to (Ohio Revised Code) 2918.12, all under the supervision of the Village of the New Miami Police Department.”
The same day, on June 24, 2024, Butler County Common Pleas Court Judge Noah Powers signed the order, saying the items would be “destroyed by the Incinerator at Children’s Hospital in Liberty Township.”
However, there are no incinerators at the hospital or in the entire township, according to township records, the township’s fire chief and a spokesman for Cincinnati Children’s.
The hospital spokesman told FOX19 NOW in July 2024 that they were unaware of an agreement with New Miami police for drug disposal.
Webb wrote a letter on village letterhead stating otherwise to the judge and an assistant county prosecutor who handled the application and court order for the drugs.
This document was also filed into the court record.
The letter has both Webb’s and Gilpin’s names signed on it, according to a copy of it.
Webb’s letter explained that the drugs and other items were destroyed at a different location than called for in the court order, because “Children’s Hospital Liberty Campus rescinded their offer to utilize their facilities for (the) destruction of the listed items attached to the Destruction Order….”
“I, Chief of Police Harold R. Webb II, do hereby state that with Property Room Manager Officer Casey Gilpin, who is in good standing with the Department, items listed in the Application for Disposition of Drugs, Drug Paraphernalia, and Miscellaneous Property. Now held by the Village of New Miami Police Department, was disposed of pursuant to O.R.C. 2981.12.
His letter goes on to say the “Controlled Items that could be incinerated” were “by fire in a controlled container” and burned at a private residence in Middletown by members of the New Miami Police Department.
“All other non-controlled items were disposed of in a secure dumpster,” he wrote, at a location that is where a public storage facility is located off Wilkens Boulevard near hotels, a motel called Mason Inn and a Home Depot store in Deerfield Township.
Records released to us by the village show Gilpin sent and received emails about New Miami police business to a Cincinnati Children’s email account bearing his name, indicating he performed security work there in some capacity at the time.
A hospital spokesman would not discuss personnel matters or confirm to FOX19 NOW in our previous coverage whether Gilpin was a hospital employee or worked at Children’s for a third-party security firm.
Pattern of leaving
Gilpin resigned amid negative circumstances at his previous policing job, too, at the New Richmond Police Department, on June 29, 2021, state records show
New Richmond Police Chief Michael Couch wrote in state records shared with FOX19 NOW that Gilpin was “under internal investigation for”:
“Falsification of work records with the intent to deceive department records.”“Misrepresenting material facts or making any false or misleading statement on any official document“As the firearms instructor, failure to keep accurate records of all training shoots/qualifications.”
He also resigned from the village of Woodlawn’s police department in early March 2011, state records show.
Gilpin left amid a misdemeanor plea agreement to surrender his law enforcement certificate, according to a copy of “Notice of Peace Officer Termination” the Ohio Attorney General’s Office released to FOX19 NOW in 2024 via public record request.
In the part of the document titled “Termination Information,” then-Woodlawn Police Chief William Obermeyer wrote and signed on March 8, 2011:
“Theft from Kroger while work(ing) a(n) off-duty detail in uniform. Subject charge(d) with theft.”
A spokeswoman for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office told us when she emailed the record to us in the summer of 2024: “As a result of the theft charge, Casey Gilpin’s Peace Officer Certification was revoked, but this was done in error at the time (2011). He was recertified in 2013.”
No record of a theft charge against Gilpin is on file in Hamilton County’s court system, according to the Clerk of Courts.
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